When They Don’t Love You Back

There’s a strange feeling that sometimes overcomes us when we’re reaching out to someone, this feeling of acute embarrassment. “Are we bothering them?” we ask ourselves, and almost wanting to apologize for even sending a message in the first place. It’s as though our very presence in their lives is a nuisance, and our efforts to connect as friends or lovers is one that only complicates things for them. We want to say, “I’m sorry that I want to talk to you, it’s weird and I should probably stop.”

The thing is, you can feel when you’re bothering someone. It’s not difficult to tell when you are the one who is always reaching out, always initiating contact, always starting the conversation. You realize in a way that is at once terribly humiliating and almost masochistically sweet that you are the one chasing after them. When they grant you with their…